Entertainment

3 Social Media Lessons From the Restaurant World

Chris Allison is a social media strategist at NeboWeb, where he helps clients make the most of the social web. You can follow him on Twitter as the voice behind @Neboweb.

In the midst of all the noise surrounding social media marketing and emerging technologies, we sometimes get caught up in the grandeur of the transition and forget how this all actually works. When you start looking around, it's easy to think that what makes a campaign successful is some strange, quirky factor. It's true, there's a lot of potential to use these tools for trying out new things and creating out-of-the-box experiences, but that's not the point. The bottom line is that social media offers an opportunity to bring something useful to your customers. To learn how to do it, look no further than the world of food chains, mobile vendors, and top of the line restaurants.

Below are three lessons from the world of food that will help you better utilize social media to bring value to your customers.

1. Play to your strengths

When it comes to convenience, no one does it like fast food. People don't eat fast food because it's hot and delicious — though that helps — people eat fast food because it's cheap, the food comes out quick, and there's almost always a place to get it nearby. It's convenient in all respects. With that in mind, anything a fast food company can do to become more convenient is worth considering. This is an important concept to remember when setting out on your social media campaign, and a lesson well learned from a few top fast food brands: play to your strengths.

With the iPhone now claiming 18% of the mobile market, it makes sense to customize a tool for this growing market. Fast food leaders Chipotle and Pizza Hut have both implemented applications for ordering through the iPhone, and we can expect more of the industry to follow suit. Why? Because, while making an iPhone application may not be groundbreaking, these particular applications play to the strength of the fast food industry — convenience. With all of the options laid out before them, there's perhaps no better way to create another level of convenience than taking the ordering process mobile. It's simple, but effective.

What are your strengths? Whether it's quality, convenience, your image, or low prices, social media provides ways to simply and effectively play to your strengths.

2. Solve Old Problems

Playing to your strengths is a straightforward and reliable approach, but sometimes there's a great opportunity hidden behind your weakness. One of the ways companies have been so successful with social media is by using this new avenue to solve old problems. Perhaps no one has created such an uproar on this front than a group of now-famous food trucks.

You see, if you're a food truck, there's one problem that historically has haunted your customers: they don't know where you are! Children relish the mystery that surrounds the ice cream man's appearances, but I think we adults are more in favor of reliable grub. But, we're also in favor of tasty grub, and it can often be found inside a moving food truck. What to do?

If there's one thing you can take away from these quirky food trucks it's not do something crazy and you'll get attention. It's solve an old problem and you'll win customers. It's not that personality hasn't played a part in their success, but the fundamental innovation that has driven their momentum is the old problem now solved.

3. Answer The Big Question

If you're thinking about diving into social media for the first time, you might be thinking on a more fundamental level than solving big problems or playing to your strengths. Social media is, well, social. It's about talking. There are a lot of things you could be saying, but an excellent tactic is to answer the big question. If you say nothing else, answer the big question.

What's the big question? It depends on your business, but one of my favorite examples comes from one of my old stomping grounds, Madden's Casual Gourmet, a hidden gem and my favorite hometown establishment. Madden's personal and friendly e-mails regularly answer their customers' biggest question: what's on the menu? Because the chef has something new every weekend, this is an incredibly useful reminder. Plus, it's a great entry point for their marketing message. E-mail isn't the latest way to use social media, but, if used properly, it's still an effective tool to get people talking. Madden's proves that it's not which tool you use that matters, but which questions you answer.

Conclusion

All of these companies have had success with their efforts because they were able to create something useful for their customers. When you begin crafting your social campaign, keep these strategies in mind. If you're able to enhance your strengths, solve a problem, or answer a big question, you're probably headed down the right track.

Mashable
is a global, multi-platform media and entertainment company. Powered by its own proprietary technology, Mashable is the go-to source for tech, digital culture and entertainment content for its dedicated and influential audience around the globe.